Vegan MoFo and September CSA’s – Simple Food

I bit the bullet and signed up for VeganMoFo. To be honest, I’m excited but dreading the work and extra time it’s going to take to blog more often, but in the end I’m sure it will be worth it. My goal is to blog at least every weekday.

Week One – Random but interesting posts to get caught up and eased in.
Week Two – Other bloggers’ recipes. I read so many food blogs with so many good recipes but never get around to making them, so I’ve picked five of my favorite blogs and will prepare their recipes.
Week Three – Vegetarian Times week. I’ve subscribed to VT for over five years, and I read regularly but rarely make any of their recipes. I’ve picked out meals from the October or November issue of VT from the last five years.
Week Four – Flavor Bible Challenge. The Flavor Bible is a big book which lists flavor matches for tons of different ingredients, so to get my creative juices flowing I flipped to five random pages and will make a dish with a match from that page that is either unusual or something I’ve never paired. I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll adapt recipes or create my own, or both.

My criteria for choosing MoFo recipes is essentially that they fit the way I eat, which is seasonal, relatively low-cal/low-fat, and not ridiculously time-consuming.

Also, you must be living under a rock if you’re a vegan blogger who doesn’t know about this yet, but the first vegan blogger conference, Vida Vegan, is taking place in Portland next August. I haven’t registered yet but plan on doing so as soon as possible. I can’t wait to visit Portland for the first time!

The first thing I did with those fresh veggies was a big salad for lunch. This one had lettuce, cucumber, radish, tomato, purple peppers, and an herbed balsamic vinaigrette heavy on the dried oregano.

I wanted to use the zucchini raw, and I had what I thought was the great idea to blend it with the basil and some silken tofu to make a pasta sauce. I don’t know which ingredient was the culprit, but it turned out bitter and not that good. Thank goodness I added marinara and vegan parmesan to the whole wheat penne, which saved my dinner!

One day, I craved a big ol’ veggie plate. Roasted fingerlings, seasoned tomato, steamed squash and black eyed peas with onion, turnips, turnip greens, some other sort of green, and some liquid smoke. The plate was perfectly tasty and filling.

9-23-10 CSA: grapes, bok choy, radishes, honeydew and fennel

turnips, basil, swiss chard, pears, peppers and tomatoes

I actually did a really poor job of using this CSA delivery, and some of it went straight in the compost bin :( My coworker did give me some Thai basil from her backyard, which inspired me to put what was left into this.

Red curry soup with onion, green pepper, turnip, carrot, swiss chard and peas. I started with coconut oil and red curry paste and added everything else according to cooking time. I didn’t have any coconut milk on hand, nor did I want the extra fat, so I added some almond milk at the end to make it a little creamy.